I agree with this idea: “technology cannot take away is the unique aesthetic and emotional charge that only the human hand and brain can give to an object,” I believe that through our emotional reaction due to depravation we create objects or works of art that some how move the users or viewers. The real essence of resource deficiency in my opinion brought technology to produce replacement solutions and to mimic in a perfect way while craft is almost a pure form of creation. The lack of resources can also result in imperfection and that imperfection might be beautiful, in the mind of the viewer.
I found this quote extremely relevant in distinguishing craft from design by the use of it in our society of accepted roles: “Design is an argument and so is craft. In fact, given the marginal status of the craft economy, its power is almost entirely rhetorical and symbolic. It is easy to overlook the arguments presented by design, because they constitute the mainstream and represent the dominant mode of production. Only at the edges (of fashion, price or taste) does a design ‘statement’ become impossible to ignore. On the other hand, all craft object is a form of dissent. The choice of craft object is always self-conscious” . As described by the author the argument between craft and design the two disciplines will always remain but I agree that design always goes with time marking a period which is constituted by an ephemeral element and just for collectors to be wanted depending of its fashion. Craft doesn’t follow any time period; craft is a discipline that adapts to its time values and traditions. Craft is the knowledge of tradition, which varies in time through the person’s interpretations. Thus, in immediate form, it is one of the things, which surrounds us in daily life; the external object may become an extension of our subjective self and serve as a point of departure for a new knowledge and quest for reality. Design is continual movement of change, as we want to see new things and calm our desire for possession, which becomes more difficult to satisfy in periods of recession. Design implies an attempt to change the world by acting upon its objects in such a manner as to change them from their admitted physical properties and accepted roles. As a contemporary witness of social revolution movements blowing across the Middle East TV, programs are showing us how I am able to see how the Egyptians or Tunisians or Palestinians overcome resource shortages using art, design and craft. For example, lack of democracy in these countries push cartoonists to become political satirists to voice their thirst of freedom. The work of Emad Hajjaj a Jordanian cartoonist educated in a Jordanian United Nations Refugee Camp before studying Fine Art with a minor in journalism represents an excellent illustration of cognitive and visual strategies of political cartoon.
Periods of war and their aftermath offer pertinent examples to study how technology, art, craft and design might allow to triumph over a lack of resources.
The great social-leveling influence of the Second World War meant that Britons were anxious about change. As a consequence, Winston Churchill, who led Britain to victory during the war, found himself as member of the opposition when the election of 1945 returned the Labour Party to power with a huge majority4 and Clement Attlee’s new government, which brought some of the greatest changes of Britain’s history and the reconstruction of the nation. (Fig.1-2). This period saw government take control of industry and public utilities and lead to a two-year period of the nationalization including the Bank of England, the coal industry, electricity and gas, air transport, along with road, rail and waterways(fig.3). A total of twenty percent of all British industry had been taken into public ownership by 19505. This radically changed the nature of British design (See fig. 4).
Architects and designers were optimistic in the post-war period and believed in the transformative power of modern design to make the world a better place6. These designers embraced modernist social policy in the design of not only housing, but so-called democratic furnishings, interior fabrics and public spaces. ((Fig.31) Utopian post war housing and design). The war and its government-regulated aftermath delayed their careers, but made them even more determined to succeed like Frank Lloyd Wright and Mies van der Rohe, (fig.33-35). To be modern, design did not just have to be new; it had to be free of any reference to the decorative styles of the past, which at the beginning of the postwar period were still preferred by most people for the furnishing of their homes. An example of one such approach to the purpose of architecture in relation to tradition comes from Le Corbusier who, in Toward a New Architecture wrote, ”Architecture is disconnected and lost in the past.”7
Low-cost furniture harnessed the latest wood and metal working techniques, whereas pre-war furniture was solid and ponderous. A good example of this is the Antelope Chair, by Ernest Race, 1951 (fig.28). This chair is fabricated out of cheap, mass-produced and readily available material and formed part of the core furnishing for the Festival of Britain in 1951. The chair embodies a modern, democratic approach to design while acknowledging more to tradition that Le Corbusier might have allowed…(fig.37)
“Held in the summer of 1951 the Festival of Britain constituted an opportunity for Britain to display to the world what the country had achieved in terms of industry, design and culture. The Festival of Britain was also seen as an opportunity for Britain to become more colorful after the drab years of rationing and austerity under Atlee’s government. It was initially suggested that the festival should be held during the war years but this did not happen. Following the end of the war Gerald Barry, editor of the ‘News Chronicle’, pushed Sir Stafford Cripps, President of the Board of Trade, to put his weight behind a festival that would liven up Britain. Barry pointed out that 1951 would be the hundredth year anniversary of the Great Exhibition of Queen Victoria’s reign. The idea of a festival was taken up and it opened on the anniversary of the Great Exhibition.” 8
The Festival of Britain took also great inspiration from the 1946 exhibition at the Victoria & Albert Museum called 'Britain Can Make It' and targeted a nation of bruised but proud survivors, creating an optimistic mood that lasted a generation. It employed great artists and was directed with energy and flair. The Festival of Britain had a moderate budget of £12 million compared with other colossal budget exhibition. Two million leaflets in eight languages were printed to promote the event. Press ads appeared in 34 countries. Four liveried double-decker buses toured Europe and a converted aircraft carrier, called the Campania, carried a floating festival around the nation's ports. Laurie Lee, a former staff member of the Ministry of Information, wrote the captions for 30,000 exhibits. Abram Games, the last master of the drawn lithograph, did the graphics. Casson was free to recruit the best designers in the country, including Misha Black, James Gardner, Ralph Tubbs, and James Holland.
As result over 8 million people visited the festival at the Thames site alone and the festival was credited with bringing lost glamour and fun back into Britain after the problems of the depression in the 1930’s and the war itself.
The Royal Festival Hall was the first significant public building built after the war and the first modernist building to be Grade I Listed. The opening of the Royal Festival Hall in 1951 heralded the artistic revival of post war Britain (fig.29).
The Festival of Britain drastically helped to promote better British design, construction and engineering. Its inventive response to technology reflected the positive, forward-looking mood of the early post-war era, sparing the use of materials and an economical approach to construction, using the minimum number of components enforced by the austerity of the war years, when materials and labour where in short supply.9 These habits became deeply ingrained in their design psyche, solving practical problems in the most rigorous, efficient and cost-effective way (fig.36).
Towards the end of the 20th century a movement called “Art Manufacturing” consciously set out to inject art into a range of its products by commissioning a well-known artist, craftsman, or architect of the day to provide the product’s artistic content.10 This usually took the form of a surface pattern in the case of textiles and ceramics or, in the case decorative ironwork and cutlery, a decorative shape. This conscious injection of ‘art’ into manufactured objects, undertaken as a means of making them more desirable as status objects, was initially the prerogative of the traditional applied art industries and of a wealthy market, but gradually it also began to penetrate the world of new technological goods and affect the mass market.11
In both Europe and the USA the requirements for the expansion of mass production, mechanization, standardization, and the emergence of the mass market had become realities. The emergence of a whole new range of products, which made new demands on the manufacturer and transformed the life-style and expectations of the consumer, had become realities.12(Fig.38-39).
The pre-industrial, pre-capitalist system of supply neatly fitting demand was by now completely defunct and, in addition, the rule of aristocratic taste was over and new set of taste values were emerging, with the public looking to the manufacturer to fulfill its symbolic needs (fig.40-41). While in the early stages the new production machinery and techniques dictated the forms and general appearance of the new technological products, this soon proved insufficient to convince the new consumer, with his new-found wealth, that he could not live his life without possessing consumer durables for example: typewriter, TV, radio, etc.
The principles of good design had considerable impact on everything from automobiles to interiors as manufacturing production resumed in the immediate postwar period.13 The Festival of Britain is a good example in the UK of this (fig.23-29). Later, with the advent of an economy geared more and more to mass consumption, some products exploiting the modern vocabulary began to exceed the boundaries of good design with the introduction of energetic surface decoration, brash colors, and metallic glitter in order to compete for the attention of a wider and less sophisticated audience (fig.42-43).
At this time forms were created (with applied veneers, plastic laminates, and imitation materials (fig.42) and decorated with such a cacophony of colors and an audacity of ornament that these clashed most heavily with good design (fig.44)). By the middle of a decade, almost anything - even tradition - had become fair game for modern design, resulting in the multiplicity of modes that characterized the 1950s – and its subsequent reputation as a time of little content and a lot of bad taste. (e.g. PINEAPPLE ICE BUCKET – fig.45) This expression of pretentious bad taste became characterized by the use of the word kitsch that William H Gass assessed as appearing in the arts: "When money tries to buy beauty it tends to purchase a kind of courteous kitsch" (William H. Gass). The American critic Clement Greenberg entitled ‘Kitsch and Avant-Garde’ intelligently explored the meanings of ‘kitsch’ in an essay of 1939. However, although the word may be found in a number of contexts in the earlier part of the 20th century, its conscious adoption in opposition to the tenets of Modernism and ‘Good Design’ may be found in a number of Postmodern designs and the activities of design groups such as Archizoom, Studio Alchimia, and Memphis. Important in this respect were the writings of the Italian historian, theorist, and critic Gillo Dorfles, particularly in his 1969 collection of edited essays entitled ‘Kitsch the World of Bad Taste’, which explored many aspects of the iconography of popular culture (fig.46). Half a century later Kitsch has been transformed from its negative connotations and the view of kitsch symbolism has been widely reassessed. This is due to a better understanding of the value of a broader dialectic of design (fig.47) as one that can prize the restraint of a utility-based, socially responsible modern aesthetic as well as the exuberance of a lively, expressive, and ecumenical modern ornamental vocabulary with popular appeal. In our post modern era all these aspects strongly resonate in fields like interior design such as with John Pawson’s works (fig.48) and contemporary ways of shopping in furniture chains like the Conrad Shop and Habitat (fig.49-50).
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